OrganicStyle.com Offering 10% Discount!

Don't Panic - Organic Style is offering a 10% Discount! I got an email from them today - follow this link to get 10% off (they build the discount in and you see it in the shopping cart.

Gifts that make a Difference

Aveda (one of my favorite companies on the planet) is using renewably-sourced paper in their gift sets this year to help brighten the future for families and forests. Aveda stated on one of their gift flyers that:

"Over 20% of carbon dioxide greenhouse gas emissions worldwide are due to forest loss"

You can learn more about the Aveda partnership here in their video.

As a conscious customer, I love knowing that my dollars to Aveda give back.

The average woman consumes one tube of lipstick a year - make it organic!

In a former life, I was a cosmetics manager (a "get my butt though college" job that paid well!) and I recall learning in one of my sales trainings that the average woman consumes one tube of lipstick a year. That stat freaked me out (I wish I could recall the source) but it does make you think....

If you are going to wear lip color and you are going to ingest some of it, you better make it good for you!

I discovered Colorganics Lip Tint It is sheer, organic lip tint that is moisturizing with a slight hint of natural color, perfect actually. It's made with organic castor oil and moisturizing organic hemp seed oil.

For those of you who are really into safe cosmetics, ingredients are below.

Ingredients: Certified organic castor oil, certified organic beeswax, carnauba wax, certified organic hemp seed oil, certified organic jojoba oil, natural vitamin E. May contain mica, iron oxides, carmine, titanium dioxide (non-FD&C natural pigments).

Conscious beauty comes via conscious spending! May your next tube of lipstick be a quality one!

How you can stop junk mail and save trees

I did a post a few weeks ago on how to stop junk mail (after you click, scroll down) and since then, I have been taking the advice of 41pounds.org on ways to reduce my carbon footprint and stop the gastly inconvenience of junk mail.

I wanted to share some information that I didn't know until I had the help of 41pounds and wanted to pass along the wisdom....

#1. We have rights - we can stop junk mail. We just have to contact all the companies that send us junk mail and ask them to stop, or better yet, get companies like 41pounds to help you with the contacting (they make it really easy!)

#2. If you move, ask for a mail forwarding form NOT a change of address, as the post office sells your new address information (I feel so slimy thinking about that!) but really good to know huh?

#3. Supermarket club cards are an instant way to poof out that mailbox, they track our habits not to give us great savings (ok, maybe that's some of it) but they use it to market and cram our mailboxe full of landfill crap. No club cards anymore conscious spenders!

#4. When you donate, you have to request that they do not sell, share or rent your information as they most likely will.

Help save the planet, be mindful when you spend and know that as a conscious customer you have choices and there are great services to help stop junk mail

Travel Green - Support Green Hotels

I travel a lot for work and one way that I try to offset my travel output is by staying at eco-friendly hotels. I am HUGE fan of the Kimpton Hotels (when I stay in SF, I love the Hotel Triton and I just saw today that the staff at one of the Kimpton Hotels, Hotel Solamar is supporting the victims of the California Wildfires in San Diego...too cool...

Being a conscious spender means being aware of a company and their practices and I have always admired the Kimpton company for their environmental eco-friendly hotel practices (organic bedding, towels, conservation, recycling and more) but now I am a super fan of them socially too...

See their message below. If anyone wants to help the California fire victims, please do so and as a conscious customer, SUPPORT GREAT COMPANIES LIKE KIMPTON HOTELS!

We have been following the news of the wildfire and want to do something to help.

The staff of Hotel Solamar has begun efforts to provide emergency supplies to surrounding shelters to help the victims of the wildfires. To provide more widespread aid, Hotel Solamar is also collecting donations to be distributed by St. Vincent De Paul Charity and Goodwill.

If you would like to join us by making a donation, please bring the following items to the front desk at the Hotel Solamar between the hours of 8 am and 8 pm, through November 7, 2007:

* Clothing
* Blankets
* Non-perishable food
* Baby food and diapers
* Bottled water
* Pet supplies

Green Goods - Instyle.com

It is often a challenge to be a shopper junkie and a conscious spender, so I was stoked that Instyle.com had a Green Goods slideshow on their site...perfect for conscious spenders like us!!!

You can run, but you can't hide from climate change

Yep, you heard me. Climate change is scary...and so is Halloween, so in the name of seasonal online greetings, Three Leaf Cards created a spooky halloween ecard that has a cute climate change twist.

Check out the scary climate change ecard and tell us what you think.

And in the name of upcoming Hallmark holidays, there's no harm in a shameless pitch to remind all our conscious customers that you can send meangingful cards online to save time, money, stamps, resources and contribute to great nonprofit organizations (who are working to make the planet a better place) all at the same time.

Get a membership to Three Leaf Cards and you can pre-schedule all your Halloween cards now!

Almost 500 Different Cosmetic Products Deemed Toxic!

No longer should we be asking, “Rosy Rouge or Plumpy Pink?” Now we should be asking about what kind of toxic materials are we putting on our faces when we… well… put on our faces!

Yesterday, Environmental Graffiti published an article stating that the Environmental Working Group released some revealing research exposing 478 cosmetic products sold in the US contain doses of toxic chemicals which are unsafe! Holy cow!

Those are some staggering facts. Formaldehyde, selenium, hydrogen peroxide and lead acetate were found in large quantities of test samples. Not only is this toxic for our faces, but also just think about what it does to our environment!

You can check out more disturbing facts on the Environmental Working Group’s website.

Use commerce as a force for good

This is your daily break from the hamster wheel of life...yep, put down the latte, remove your cell phone from your ear and take a deep breath...good....

When we take a moment to be present in our lives we have the ability to think. When we have the ability to think, we envelop the energy to make wise choices that count.

Believe it or not, taking a moment of zen can have a tremendous impact on conscious spending. As willing (or unwilling) participants in this time crunched culture that we exist in every day, we may not be able to do as much as we want make the planet a better place, but one way we can make a difference and make a statement is by being mindful of what the green in our wallet is going to, through and for.

We stumbled upon a new initiative called Project Good that is being created by eBay and World of Good to build the largest people positive marketplace of products from around the world.

They will be launching their socially conscious community in October to provide people with positive shopping guides.

For those of us that are too time crunched to do a lot of research on how to help people and planet with our purchases, Project Good will make conscious spending a little more seamless.

Stay tuned and sign up to be notified of their launch.

What is Conscious Spending?

It seemed like a good idea to start at the top to speak and explain what Conscious Spending means to us—especially as were are striving to be a sustainable business by providing online greeting cards as an environmentally friendly alternative for “conscious spenders". Like many things in life this post has turned into an unexpected adventure.

I started by defining the parts to clarify the whole. The most appropriate definitions of “conscious” from Webster’s dictionary are: 1: perceiving, apprehending, or noticing with a degree of controlled thought or observation, and 7: done or acting with critical awareness and 8b: being concerned or interested.

So far so good: a conscious spender would make purchase decisions by combining their concerns and awareness of the environment and social justice with a focused and critical decision making process. Or: they would think and reflect before acting.

And then the adventure began: The most appropriate definitions for “Spend” are: 1: to use up or pay out, or 2 a: Exhaust, wear out, b: to consume wastefully. Oops. It seems to me that a conscious person wouldn’t want to purchase something under any of these definitions—consuming wastefully is precisely what got us to where we are today.

Here is where a bit of self disclosure is in order—you may have noticed that the name of our blog is “conscious spending”. In hindsight, this is not a great name. We picked it because we were focused on action (setting up the blog) rather than thinking and reflecting before acting. So we’ve created a fantastic real world example of how not to make a decision and/or make a purchase. If we would’ve done more research we would have come up with another name. Let’s continue the research together:

Some have started using the phrase “conscious consumerism” (as have we at times). Consumerism is defined as “the theory that an increasing consumption of goods is economically desirable; also: a preoccupation with and an inclination toward the buying of goods”. Again this is exactly the theory and behavior that we’re trying to challenge.

How about consumer? I’m sure you already know where this is heading: 1: one that consumes : as a: one that utilizes economic goods b: an organism requiring complex organic compounds for food which it obtains by preying on other organisms or by eating particles of organic matter. Actually not all that bad, we all have to consume (eating and drinking come to mind) but still not quite the message we’re trying to promote. (I had to leave the last part in for some dark humor-the phrase “preying on other organisms” just hits too close to home.)

How about conscious customer? 1: one that purchases a commodity or service. Viola! Finally, a simple and clear definition of the action required to complete a purchase without the added burden of having to do more and more of it.

We’re ALL customers in one form or another and that in itself is not unhealthy to society or the environment. Of course it what and how often we buy that would define us as a consumer, spender or a Conscious customer.